A blog about politics, science, archaeology, human evolution, jazz, culture, and the meaning of life by Michael Balter, a journalist and journalism professor based in Paris and New York (aka The Blog for People Who Don't Have Time to Read Blogs.)

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Tuesday, May 16, 2017

The calculated "heritability" for having two hands is essentially zero.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Leon Brocard

In the May issue of Scientific American, I critique the latest efforts to find genetic variants that provide elevated risk for schizophrenia, the most debilitating of all mental illnesses. The story is behind a paywall, although I hope that readers will be able to get access to it either through personal or institutional subscriptions. I did, however, provide a synopsis of the main points in an interview with John Batchelor, which is available on his podcast feed.

The article included a sidebar about the heritability of schizophrenia, and some common misunderstandings about what heritability actually is. Lack of space made it impossible to go into much detail, but below I provide an expanded version of the text which includes some additional details. I hope readers will find it useful.

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Researchers have been searching for schizophrenia related genes for at least 50 years. What makes them think they will find them? The rationale is spelled out in the introduction to nearly every scientific paper on schizophrenia genetics: The disorder has a high “heritability.” This term is often interpreted—by many researchers and the general public alike—as a measure of the relative role played by genes. Heritability is usually expressed as a percentage between zero and 100%.

Scientists have estimated the heritability of schizophrenia using several approaches, including studies of twins, both identical and fraternal. One oft cited study dates to 2003, when a research team reported a “meta-analysis” of 12 previous twin studies. (In a meta-analysis, the data from earlier studies are pooled to increase statistical power.) The team concluded that schizophrenia had a heritability of 81%.

However, many researchers argue that heritability estimates for schizophrenia and other so-called complex human traits (ranging from disease susceptibility to how tall a person is) can be very misleading. One major debate is over key assumptions used to simplify the method. One assumption is that genes and the environment do not interact but have only an additive effect; another is that genes act independently rather than in concert. Still another, called the equal environment assumption (EEA), considers both identical and fraternal twins to be subject to the same environmental influences. Thus if identical twins are more similar than fraternals for a particular trait, that greater similarity must be entirely due to genes. But critics argue that the EEA is violated in a number of ways, including the greater likelihood that identical twins will be treated the same by their parents while they are growing up.

“These basic assumptions are wrong,” says Roar Fosse, a neuroscientist at the Vestre Viken Hospital Trust in Norway, who led a critical assessment of the EEA published in 2015. But twin researchers have mounted a vigorous defense of the approach, countering that even if the EEA and other assumptions are oversimplifications, the methodology is basically sound. “I don’t think it’s likely that current heritability numbers are substantially overestimated,” says Kenneth Kendler, a psychiatrist at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Medicine.

But some researchers have an even more profound critique of heritability. They argue that it is not truly an indication of the relative role of genes and environment. The actual definition of the term, they point out, is much more technical: Heritability measures how much the variation of a trait in a particular population—whether height, IQ, or being diagnosed with schizophrenia--is due to genetic variation among the individuals in that population. “Heritability and genetic cause are not the same,” says Mary-Claire King, a geneticist at the University of Seattle. Peter Visscher, a geneticist at the University of Queensland in Australia, agrees. “It is a misconception that a high heritability implies genetic determination. Human height has a heritability of 80%, and yet environmental factors such as childhood nutrition and healthcare can have a big effect on adult height.”

As an example of how misleading heritability estimates can be, Eric Turkheimer, a behavioral geneticist at the University of Virginia, points to the human trait of having two arms. Nearly everyone in a given population has two of them, and there is normally no difference in the number of arms between identical twins—who share 100% of their genes—and fraternal twins, who are assumed to share 50% of their genes. Thus when heritability for arm number is calculated, it comes out to zero. And yet we know that having two arms is almost entirely genetically determined.

Figuring out what heritability for schizophrenia actually means is key, researchers say, because even the most high-powered genetic studies have only identified about a third of the predicted genetic component. A similar predicament faces researchers working on other complex diseases, including diabetes and Crohn’s disease, where an even higher percentage of the heritability remains unaccounted for. Will this so-called “missing heritability” eventually show up in more sophisticated studies—or will it turn out that genes are not playing as big a role as heritability estimates have long predicted? The jury is still out.

Friday, May 12, 2017

The revelations of the past week are dramatic and exciting for those who really want to get at the truth about what happened during the 2016 election. Nevertheless, they could have a down side.My main concern is that some anti-Trump people might be staking too much on evidence turning up of direct collusion between his campaign people (Manafort et al) and the Russians to influence the election. It's one thing for them to have been in touch with the Russians, and it's another thing for the Russians to have "hacked" the election, but the Russians might have been too smart (they are much smarter than Trump and his boys) to leave any traces that this was coordinated. In fact it didn't need to be, the Russians just could have been working all the angles. I'm not saying this is the way it was, but if it turns out that way then the investigations are going to fizzle and the Trumpists will be able to claim there was never anything serious there. It's all fine to be focused on it as long as it does not distract from the need to build a mass movement that will have impact on the streets, and in the voting booth late next year (that's still a long way off.)Unfortunately, too many Democrats hate doing anything that might involve actually changing anybody's mind about political questions. Instead most establishment Demos prefer to slosh donor money around, build machines, and focus on voter turnout, rather than influence political views. The "return" of Hillary Clinton to political life is a bad sign that way--she represents the very worst of Democratic Party machine politics.

Time to search for a new curator of human origins

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About Me

I am an anthropology, archaeology, and animal cognition writer with 20 years' experience covering these fields for Science, Audubon, Scientific American, and other publications. I also cover sexual misconduct for The Verge.
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